Salamander

The swell of the greenskins' brutish voices rose into a clamour.

Tsu'gan felt the dull nagging at the back of his head again, the sensation of being in the tunnel below the iron hall. The feeling of cold metal against his forehead where he'd pressed the bolter's mouth returned. Nascent psychic energy from the orks was building. Perhaps it was somehow fuelling whatever lurked in the darkness beneath the fortress.

Elysius's voice responded to it, became the anchor once more to keep the Salamanders grounded. In their multitudes, the orks had got beyond the killing field and were readying for a first assault against the wall. The Chaplain used the bark of his bolt pistol to punctuate his spite-filled sermons, whilst all across the battlements flamers spewed with promethium fury.

'Cleanse and burn!' roared Honorious, as his faceplate was lit by his weapon's fiery glow.

Despite the Space Marines' strategic acquisition of targets, and their spoiling tactics, the sheer mass of greenskins meant a close-up battle was inevitable. That suited the Salamanders well.

'Here is where your mettle shall be tested,' cried N'keln, his voice clear as a silver spear thrown in sunlight, resonating through the comm-feed. 'Be the anvil, become the hammer!' The effect was galvanising.

'Judged in the fires of battle…' remarked Lazarus with genuine admiration.

Iagon stayed silent, focused on slaying the approaching orks with angry bursts of his bolter.

'Hold them here,' snarled Tsu'gan, steeling his squad as he knew his brother- sergeants would be too. 'We knew this was coming,' he added, as the first of the ork grapnels

clanged

and found purchase against the battlements. He blasted apart the thick chain dangling off it, waiting for the line to become taut before he fired. Muffled screams from the unseen greenskins once climbing up the severed chain, now falling to their deaths, made Tsu'gan smile beneath his battle-helm.

Three more grapnels followed it. Brother S'tang took out one, before another five rattled onto the battlements, biting deep.

Brother Catus mistakenly hacked at a chain with his combat blade before leaning over to strafe the orks below with his bolter. He lurched back with a cleaver lodged between his neck and clavicle, spurting blood. S'tang dragged him aside, putting a bolt through the cranium of the ork that dared be the first to poke its head up over the rockcrete lip of the wall.

Ugly greenskin faces emerged en masse after that. They were attached to brutish bodies carrying cleavers and saw-toothed blades.

Chaplain Elysius brained one of the orks with his crozius, electricity still coursing through its shattered frame as it fell back in the morass of warriors below, before jamming his bolt pistol into the maw of a second and reducing its head to shredded meat. A red haze spattered his skull-faced visage, anointing him in blood. Yet as deadly as he was, Elysius could not kill them all.

'Honorious!' yelled Tsu'gan.

The battle-brother swept his flamer around from pouring gouts of promethium down the wall and sent a searing blaze over the greenskins trying to outflank the Chaplain.

'Burn in the fires of perdition, xenos!' spat Elysius, as the orks were consumed and plunged, flailing, into the mobs amassing at the foot of the wall.

Tsu'gan wiped a swathe of blood from his visor and took a moment to look around the battle site. Sporadic skirmishes had erupted all across the wall. The Tactical squads bore the brunt of the attacks, allowing the Devastators in the higher, less accessible towers to continue wreaking carnage amongst the greater horde that swelled beyond in the ash basin like a green slough.

Many sergeants had broken their warriors up into combat squads; those that fought hand-to-hand or to disengage the grapnels, and those that maintained a ranged fusillade.

In the brief seconds of assessment he allowed himself, Tsu'gan also noticed ork vehicles prosecuting suicide runs against the walls. He saw a bulky wagon, festooned with plates and brimming with orks, rammed headlong in the wall. Shot apart by heavy bolters and multi-meltas, the wagon was a wreck, but now the greenskins were climbing up its tower-like pulpit and using the debris to gain the battlements. Missiles

choomed

overhead, super-heated beams cross-hatched the night obliterating the ork suicide runners before they could close, but couldn't stop them all.

An impact against the lower part of his section almost knocked Tsu'gan off his feet. The tremor rippled up through the metal and rockcrete. A blast wave of heat washed over the sergeant and his squad, as the vehicle that had collided into the wall ignited and exploded. A few seconds later, scrapes and clanks could be heard as the orks scrambled up the makeshift siege tower.

'Grenades!' ordered Tsu'gan, knowing that he was out, but that half of his squad could oblige him. Frag grenades bounded down the wrecked carcass of the vehicle, pulped and burning against the wall, and exploded in a series of dull percussions. The scraping and clanking ceased.

'Glory to Prometheus!' he yelled, exultant in this small victory.

Then he saw the force approaching the Techmarine Draedius's gate.

A mob of heavily armoured orks advanced under fire towards the fortress's only ingress.

Something moved amongst the larger ork bodies. Tsu'gan caught the glint of metal, a spherical object daubed in jagged iconography, akin to a mine…

'Concentrate fi—'

A concussive blast erupted from the gate below, cutting the sergeant off before he could issue the order to try and stop it. The Salamanders occupying the section of wall directly above it were thrown off their feet. Out the corner of his eye, Tsu'gan thought he saw Shen'kar pitched off the battlements. His vision was marred by coiling smoke and exploding debris, so he couldn't be certain. Brother Malicant stumbled and the company banner fell. Only Captain N'keln kept his footing, snatching the banner in defiance of the fire crawling rapidly up the wall, lashing tongues of flame devouring everything they touched.

'Tank bombers,' said Tiberon, groggily. The squad had felt the blast wave like the full force of a hammer blow. 'Must've cracked open the gate…'

Greenskins swarming into the dust cloud billowing from the gate confirmed Tiberon's theory. The Salamanders still standing aimed through the murk, trying to take out the ork assault force that had seemingly appeared from nowhere. Ork commandos returned fire, and Tsu'gan saw another of his brothers fall; a lucky shot through his gorget disabling him.

The heavy-armoured brutes also returned, obscured by the grey fug of smoke and churned ash now swathing the battlefield. The throaty rumble of revving chain-blades could be heard through it, anonymous and forbidding.

The orks converged on the gate and the brother-sergeant was powerless to stop it. He cursed his position on the wall, wanting desperately to be where the fighting was fiercest. A bright plume of fire, its roar so loud it eclipsed the chugging chorus of mechanised blades, tore through the smoke and murk below, devouring the assaulting horde with voracious hunger.

Fire Anvil

had unleashed its flamestorm cannons and the orks tasted the Land Raider Redeemer's fury. Howling in rage and pain, the greenskins fell back. Enflamed bodies stumbled from the ruined gate, before sinking to their knees and collapsing in charred heaps upon the ground. No Salamander put them down; they just let them burn.

Three consecutive bursts and the conflagration ebbed, leaving scorched earth, edged by fire, in its wake.

'

In Vulkan's name and for the